The “Occupiers” Aren’t a Political Movement…

…they are a crime wave. In Oakland, battles between occupiers and police have been raging for the last 24 hours. At PJ Media’s Tatler, Zombie has an excellent collection of videos and photos which she continues to update. Dozens of videos have been posted on YouTube, pretty much all of them by sympathizers with the protesters who are claiming police brutality.

Zombie sums up the origins of the current confrontations:

After the Occupy Oakland encampment was torn down early Tuesday morning by police, the ousted protesters reconvened outside the Oakland Library on Tuesday afternoon and voted to attempt a re-occupation of the same plaza from which they had just been evicted. Summoned by waves of emergency tweets and emails, fresh recruits joined the evicted Occupiers and early this evening once again marched on downtown Oakland, intending to reclaim Frank Ogawa Plaza.

But the Oakland Police were of course monitoring all this, and along with many other local police departments they were waiting for the protesters’ invasion. After an hours-long standoff at 14th and Broadway, interrupted by several confrontations and arrests, everything started to turn violent some time after 9:30pm.

The Oakland Tribune reported a little while ago that things are now calm, but the leftists have put out a call for rioting to resume at 6 p.m. tonight.

On Tuesday, Occupy Oakland demonstrators clashed with police, who used tear gas at least three times in futile attempts to fully disperse the more than 1,000 people who took to the streets after the early-morning raid of the movement’s encampment.

The rolling protest came about 12 hours after hundreds of police from across the Bay Area rousted about 300 people from the two-week old camp at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza. Tensions escalated after protesters vowed to return to the plaza, which was left with tents overturned and food, carpet, personal belongings and mounds of trash strewed on the lawn.

“We had to deploy gas to stop people from throwing rocks and bottles at police,” said Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan, adding that he was unsure about what other crowd control methods were used by outside police agencies. There were unconfirmed reports that flash-bang grenades and wood dowels were launched at protesters.

Oakland is home to a number of radical groups, and demonstrations there have a high potential for violence. Stay tuned.